Trail/Wildlife Camera

Hi. My wifey suggested buying me trail/wildlife camera for xmas. We are in Uk and only get a fox,cats & perhaps hedgehog at night so it would be interesting to record them.Black & white seems to be the norm for budget cameras.No glow with a good fast shutter speed as so many reviews seems to catch wildife after they have gone by camera.
I have read so many reviews and to be honest it does seem you just stick a pin and choose one. As I said it will be a budget one under a £100 and to be honest does not have to be the best specs as long as it catches a image. Any recommendations from members. Thank you

 

Hi trogre
I did a bit of research a while back as I wanted something reliable without too many bells and whistles.
What I seleted was a Browning BTC-7A which is no longer available.
This has no wireless coms, just saves to SD card, no smartphone or cloud connectivity and has no GPS taging.
Don't go for No-Glo LEDs. These have a shorter range than then Lo-Glo, and it doesn't faze wildlife. No-Glos are mainly aimed at surveilance alarms/cameras
Checking out Browning's website, the nearest current model appears to be Recon Force Elite HP5.
They recommend using lithium AA batts, and the very best that I have found , but only available on-line, are Energiser Ultimate Lithium. Not the cheapest but they last a good while. I have now added a rechargeable 12v Li-ion battery pack that acts as primary power and the camera switches to internal batts if it gets too low. Browning do supply similar but what I put together is better and LOTS cheaper!
Also most/all trail cams record colour during the day but can only record in B&W at night. Unless you want to add flood lights, of course.
I hope this helps

Edit: I know the Browning is a bit above what you were looking at. Friends of mine who bought from Ebay were all unimpresed with picture quality and longevity or lack of. The more I looked on-line at what people were actually using, the name Browning kept on coming up with positive comments. I don't know what their higher end models are like, but I am more than impressed with mine.

 

Hi Trogre,

Not sure if you got a trail camera for Xmas, but I recommend a Ceyomur CY95.

I bought mine about a year ago and it's great. What is really useful is the solar panel, which takes care of charging the camera most of the time. It does come with a cable for charging, which I have used for the initial charge and once since. You can also put in some batteries, which I did, but they have not been used as the solar panel is so efficient. Also to retrieve your videos or photos I use the Bluetooth facility to transfer to my smartphone, which depending on how far away the camera is can be done sitting indoors. Picture, video and sound quality is superb. I cannot fault it! They are still for sale on Amazon for about £120 and well worth it.

I have strapped mine to a strip of wood as that makes it easy to tie up and untie from many positions or just stuff in a bush! It's low glow, but only the foxes have been puzzled by the night light. I enclose some photos of the muntjacs, which come to feed just behind my back garden. One gave the camera a good sniff and you can hear it!

I am not a sales person for Ceyomur! I have just come from the GW forum as we are being shut down.

As well as wildlife watching I also do gardening and will explore your site more fully soon.

So glad you have taken us all on.

 

My wife gave me a Spartan Eclipse for Christmas, I am very pleased with it. It has 24 mp colour images in daylight and excellent b&w images and videos at night.

 

At night the wildlife does get quite close. The muntjac has turned up again and it's the same one as he has a slit in his ear - poor chap. And the fox looks like a dog! It was on top of a 3 ft wall trying to rush past the camera. Looks a bit sad.

 

That's the one my wife recently bought. Not put it outside yet though, we started testing it inside and found it fascinating watching our cat's nightly routine as he lets himself out the catflap and then returns just before daybreak. Well pleased with it so far. The batteries seem to last for ages. We'll put it out this weekend.

 

Glad you've got one too @LunarSea. As it's been very wet weather I've had mine stuffed in some bushes and found a great tit came in too. The solar panel seems to provide all the power - it's still saying 100%. I don't think the additional batteries I put in get a chance to be used.

I do recommend strapping the camera to a strip of wood as it makes it so portable.

Photo enclosed of my great tit showing off his wings.

 

We have a trail camera in our orchard. We have at least 3 foxes and looking at the card today saw a hedgehog. We relocated 2 before Christmas from the RSPCA and this is only the second time we have seen them. Lovely to have them.

 

So pleased with the first one @cactus_girl we've now bought a second one. The first one seems to have become fully utilised monitoring our old (& recently very poorly) cat's comings & goings so we need another one to catch the badger, fox & hedgehog visits.

 

Yes it would be useful to have more than one trail camera @LunarSea. But not for wildlife. We recently had some hoodies come up the road with some jamming equipment and those with Ring doorbells were unable to record anything. I thought I could just put my trail camera up - I don't think they could jam it? A neighbour did spot the hoodies, called the police and they were arrested up the road.

I keep moving my camera around the garden depending on the weather. I think I have identified what is making holes in our bank (more than one type of rodent), but am trying to get better pictures (night time ones).

Hope that old cat's a bit perkier now.

 

Yes thankyou - he's virtually back to normal now. But my wife's voyeuristic habits seem to have died hard!